


and repeat

by harinezumi_kun



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mild Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harinezumi_kun/pseuds/harinezumi_kun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>all the times ohmiya confess their love to the rest of the group - how it goes wrong before going right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and repeat

**Author's Note:**

> for arashi_on fundraiser. the request was for "Ohno and Nino telling the other three members that they are together, which doesn’t go has easily as they had hoped". thank you for your patience! this actually turned out to be quite a challenging prompt, and i ended up writing in a slightly different style than usual, but i hope you enjoy it :)

The first time Ohno and Nino confess their love to the rest of Arashi, it’s a joke. And the reactions are pretty priceless.

Aiba’s eyes are wide, but the rest of his face is carefully blank, like he knows he might be getting played but isn’t sure yet if it’s really a joke. Jun’s mouth is already curling up into a grin, because he’s the comedy leader after all, so he can tell when something funny is about to happen. Sho, however, looks completely shocked, like he just got hit in the face with a water balloon.

“No way!” Jun crows, breaking the tension. “You guys are just shitting us, right?”

“Never!” Nino retorts, with highly overplayed affront. He catches Ohno in a stranglehold.

“Our love is pure and true!” Ohno chokes out, going for the ticklish spot on Nino’s side.

“Gross,” Jun chuckles, and Aiba is laughing now, too, but the lighthearted mood is interrupted by a violent _BANG_ as Sho slams the book he was reading down on the table and then stalks out of the dressing room.

“What the hell?” Jun says, after an awkward pause.

“He looked really mad,” Aiba says in a small voice. “Guys?”

Nino and Ohno exchange a confused glance, and Jun is staring at the door anxiously.

“Maybe I should—” he begins, but Ohno cuts him off.

“We’ll go,” he says. “It was our fault.”

“Apparently,” Nino adds with a little huff of annoyance, but he follows Ohno out of the room, arms crossed and brows knit.

They find Sho a little ways down the corridor, standing stiff backed in front of the drink machine. When he hears their footsteps and glances over his shoulder and sees them coming, he quickly digs some change out of his pocket and crams it into the coin slot. He’s punching the Vitamin Water button, muttering to himself, just as Ohno and Nino come up on either side of him.

“Stupid piece of—come on.” Sho punches the button again, and a little red light in the corner blinks. “Sold out?! Fucking—fine, forget it—” and he pummels the coin return, but nothing happens. “Come _on_ —goddamn shitty piece of crap machine—fuck!” He kicks it. “Fuck, fuck, shit, damn, fuck!”

He doesn’t walk away after his tirade, just stands and stares at the machine with his hands fisted at his sides. After a moment, Nino reaches out and pushes the Pocari Sweat button, because he knows that’s what Sho really wanted anyway, and hands the bottle to his friend after it drops into the slot. Sho takes it, but doesn’t open it.

“We’re sorry,” Ohno says quietly. “It was just a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny,” Sho returns, his voice hard. “You can’t just joke about shit like that.”

Nino knows Sho is mad, knows Sho gets mad more often nowadays, but there’s something different about this. Sho is still staring hard at the drink display in front of him, but it’s not just anger—his eyes look watery and red, and his lips, pressed tight together, are trembling just a tiny bit. Nino looks up just in time to catch Ohno’s matching expression of realization.

“It wasn’t,” Nino says carefully. “It wasn’t a gay joke, Sho-chan.”

Sho does meet Nino’s eyes, then, and his expression is guarded and uncertain.

“Yeah,” Ohno adds, and Sho turns his attention to the older boy. “We don’t care if, uh—if people—are gay. It was an ‘us’ joke. You know? Can you imagine me and Nino actually dating?”

Finally, Sho cracks a little smile. “No. It would be completely ridiculous.”

“Exactly,” Nino says, laying a hand on Sho’s shoulder now that he’s released some of his tension.

Sho glances between Nino and Ohno, chewing his lower lip. “So…you really don’t care?”

“Why would we?” Ohno asks, looking genuinely confused.

“Okay,” Sho says after a moment. His face sags in relief. “Okay.”

They walk back to the dressing room together, Ohno’s arm around Sho’s shoulders and Nino’s around his waist. They play the outburst off to Jun and Aiba as exam related stress, and everyone goes back to their morning routine.

And Nino thinks maybe they won’t do that joke again.

*

But, the next time Ohno and Nino confess their love to the rest of Arashi, it isn’t a joke. At least, it’s not meant to be.

“Really,” Ohno says to the startled silence in the hotel room. “We’re dating.”

Sho is still smiling uncertainly, and Aiba just looks confused, but Jun’s face falls into a bored sneer.

“You’re joking again, right? Stop being disgusting.” And he turns back to the concert footage playing at low volume on the TV.

There’s a beat, and then Nino drops Ohno’s hand and crosses his arms peevishly.

“You’re no fun at all, Jun-pon,” and if the lightness in his voice is a little strained, Jun doesn’t seem to notice.

Sho glances between his bandmates uncertainly. “So…you’re just joking?”

“Of course we are,” Nino snaps. Ohno gives Nino an inscrutable look before adding a halfhearted, “Yeah.” 

And that’s when Aiba gets up and leaves the room without a word.

After a beat of silence, Nino scrubs his hands across his face with a muffled _“shit”_ , then stalks out of the room. Ohno follows a moment later, waving back Sho, who rises half out of his seat, uncertain. Jun does not even look away from the television.

Aiba’s room is three doors down and on the opposite side of the hallway from Sho’s where they had congregated. Now, Aiba is leaning back against his own door, turning and turning his key-card in his long awkward fingers, and somehow managing to look small and fragile in his baggy t-shirt and checkered pajama pants. He looks up when Nino and Ohno approach, glancing between them thoughtfully.

“In,” Nino says, when Aiba opens his mouth to speak, and grabs his friend’s key to open the door. Ohno herds Aiba in after Nino with a soft smile, and they all go to sit on the foot of the big bed, with Aiba in the middle.

“But,” Aiba says eventually, voice scratchy and low, “you _weren’t_ really kidding, were you? This time?”

“If we need to be,” Ohno says, “we can be.”

Aiba shakes his head wordlessly, and turns to Nino, who interrupts him again before he can speak.

“It’s fine,” Nino says, pulling his feet up to sit cross-legged and hunched over. “It doesn’t—whatever, okay?”

“But—no!” Aiba says, more fiercely than either of his companions are expecting. “It’s not okay for you guys to have to hide something like that just because—”

“I don’t want Jun to hate us,” Nino says—quietly, but it cuts Aiba off midsentence nonetheless.

“He doesn’t hate you!” Aiba protests. “He’s just…grumpy.”

“Yeah, for the last two years,” Nino scoffs. 

“It can wait,” Ohno says calmly. “We’ve waited this long.” He glances towards Nino, catches his eye, and they exchange a fond smile.

“But,” Aiba says, “but, that’s not fair.”

“It’s fine,” Nino says again, letting out a slow breath. “The most important thing is Arashi, and if us being together threatens that, then…it can just be a joke.” He looks over at Aiba and narrows his eyes. “And don’t you dare start crying.”

“’M not,” Aiba sniffles, blinking rapidly. “Allergies, you know.”

Ohno leans his head against Aiba’s shoulder. “Thank you, Aiba-chan.”

And Aiba reaches an arm around both of them and squeezes hard.

“You’re Arashi, too,” he says, muffled into their hair. “Nino and Ohno are Arashi, too.”

They spend the night in Aiba’s room, all crammed into one bed and tangled up together. In the morning, when Sho asks what was wrong, Aiba just says he’ll tell him when he’s older.

*

The next time Ohno and Nino confess their love to Arashi, they’re actually only confessing it to Jun, because of course Aiba knew and, unsurprisingly, he ended up spilling the beans to Sho after all.

“You mean I was the only one who didn’t know?” Jun says, his eyebrows drawing further and further together. When Sho and Aiba nod sheepishly, he whirls back to Ohno and Nino. “How long?” he demands.

“Since Around Asia,” Ohno says quietly. He watches Jun with soft, apologetic eyes.

“Three years?” Jun says after a shocked pause. His expression is shifting slowly from anger to hurt. “How did—why didn’t you just _tell_ me?”

“Well,” Nino says, with no small amount of bitterness, “the last time we tried to ‘just tell you’, you called us disgusting.”

The room goes silent again, and this time it is Sho and Aiba who quietly excuse themselves, leaving Jun alone with Ohno and Nino for whatever else is about to come.

Eventually Jun looks away, down, dropping back into his seat, and says in a small, thoughtful voice: “So, that time…you weren’t joking, really?”

“No,” Ohno answers. With a little nod of his head, he motions Nino over to the couch where Jun is sitting. Nino perches on the arm, still looking prickly and uncomfortable, and Ohno sits down next to Jun, laying a hand gently on the younger man’s knee.

“I still don’t—” Jun begins. “I just—you still should have told me. I would’ve gotten over it.”

“It wasn’t because we didn’t trust you,” Ohno says, answering the question Jun didn’t ask aloud. “We just didn’t want to cause trouble. For the group.”

Jun opens his mouth, like he wants to protest this, then closes it again, sighing a little.

“You would’ve done the same thing,” Nino says into the silence, not accusatory. Understanding.

Jun looks up at Nino through his stylishly mussed hair, his face going open and soft—startling with how rarely he shows the expression willingly, if he’s not acting. 

“What?” Nino asks. Their eyes meet and hold for a long moment, before Jun looks down again with the faintest blush blooming across the bridge of his nose. Nino gives a startled blink and slides off the couch arm into the space next to Jun.

“Jun,” Nino says, pressing himself flush against Jun’s side, “we still love you, too, you know.”

“Yeah,” Ohno agrees, giving Jun’s knee a reassuring squeeze. Jun twitches, but doesn’t turn to look at Ohno, almost seems unwilling to, his blush going a little darker.

“I know that,” he mutters, giving a shrug that does very little to dislodge either Nino or Ohno. “Of course I know something like that.”

“Do you?” Nino asks sweetly, sweetly enough that Jun realizes his person is probably about to be assaulted.

He jumps up just as Nino and Ohno simultaneously lean in to place big, wet kisses on his cheeks. And while he manages to escape and foil their plot, this means that they instead end up kissing each other, with great enthusiasm, at which point Jun opts to leave.

When he opens the door, he finds Sho and Aiba waiting on the other side.

“This doesn’t really change anything, does it?” he says with a sigh.


End file.
